279 - The Night Mare's Knights
It hadn’t taken Cleansweep very long to catch up to Fruit Crunch.
While the colt’s mad dash had initially left her behind, she’d flapped her wings as hard as she could, closing the gap quickly and calling out for him to stop. But Fruit Crunch hadn’t listened, turning his face away from her and continuing to run as fast as he could, and it hadn’t been long before Cleansweep had started to fall behind. While she knew she was a good flyer, a healthy young earth colt had stamina that she simply couldn’t match; she’d eventually needed to land, her wings aching, before Fruit Crunch had even started breathing heavily.
But just because he’d been able to outpace her hadn’t meant that he could get away from her. After all, there wasn’t anywhere for him to go; he’d taken off on a path parallel to the river, heading due east away from the camp. On the open plain, that had left him with no buildings to shut himself in or even any cover to hide behind. Once she’d rested her wings, it had been a simple matter for Cleansweep to fly up into the air and spot his position, his brown coat and red mane and tail standing out easily against the green grass.
The harder part had been waiting for him to stop running so that she could approach him. He had finally slowed to a stop, moving to the river’s edge and huddling there, facing the water. He was still like that when she landed a short distance from him, not sure what to say. With no one else around, the sound of him sobbing was impossible to miss, his ears flattened against his head as his shoulders jumped. The sight made Cleansweep lick her lips before taking a tentative step toward him. “Crunchy?” she called softly. “What’s going on?” He didn’t answer, save for his sobbing to soften, but by the way he was still shaking she knew he was just holding them back rather than calming down. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
He didn’t turn to look at her as he replied, his voice a low moan of misery. “Go away, Dust Bunny.”
But Cleansweep refused to be deterred, taking another step closer to him. “Come on, we’ve been friends our entire lives. You’ve helped me out plenty of times, remember? Like when you offered to save all that snow for me during Winter Wrap-Up so that, after it was over, I could cream Maple Leaf with snowballs and she wouldn’t be able to fight back? Or that time I hadn’t finished my homework, and on the way to school you spread peanut butter on it so that a dog would actually eat it? Oh! And when you had that idea to put those clouds in front of my parents’ bedroom windows, so they wouldn’t realize when it was light out, and-”
“I remember,” Fruit Crunch muttered, rubbing his eyes as he sniffled.
The words brought a smile to Cleansweep’s face. He still sounded awful, but at least he wasn’t crying his eyes out anymore. It’s a start, she decided, sitting down next to him. “Okay, then let this be my paying you back. Crunchy…what happened?”
For a long time he didn’t answer, curled up in the fetal position with his chin resting on his hind knees, forelegs wrapped around them and eyes fixed firmly on the river. “I wanted to make him pay,” he muttered finally.
Cleansweep didn’t need to ask who he meant. “For what he did to you before?” she probed gently, remembering what he’d yelled right before he’d started running. A moment later, Fruit Crunch gave the slightest of nods.
Cleansweep didn’t reply immediately, wondering if it would be okay to ask the next question on her mind. But she was still worried about him, and her curiosity was killing her, until she finally couldn’t help herself. “What did he do?”
Fruit Crunch’s response was to send a dark look her way, clearly resenting her asking, but she wasn’t about to back off. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I’ll have you know that Straightlace’s dad isn’t the only one who gives good advice. Mine told me that talking about painful stuff is like throwing up: you feel better when you get it out of you.”
“Yeah, well, his dad and your dad are both stupid,” muttered Fruit Crunch with another sniffle. But the hurt in his voice was so obvious that Cleansweep couldn’t bring herself to be upset. Instead, she scooted closer to him and put a hoof around him. He tensed up at the contact, but relaxed a moment later. After that he slowly opened up to her, telling her about what had happened between him, Spit Polish, and Block Party.
When he was done, Cleansweep was blinking back tears. “Oh, Crunchy, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He still wouldn’t look at her, keeping his eyes on the water. “Would you have stopped me if you had?”
Cleansweep hesitated for a moment before answering, and she saw him tense up again, hearing loud and clear what she hadn’t said. “Listen, I get that you want to pay him back for what happened. I do. But-”
“No, you don’t!” snapped Fruit Crunch, his melancholy attitude vanishing in a sudden burst of anger. “You don’t get it at all!” He leapt to his hooves then, pawing at the ground restlessly. “I didn’t just want to get back at him! I mean, I did, but that wasn’t all! I thought…” His rage suddenly fizzled, and he sat down, turning his face back to the water.
“What?” pressed Cleansweep.
Fruit Crunch heaved a sigh, miserable again. “I thought that if I could smack him around, knock him down until he couldn’t get up, it’d make what happened before go away. Like…like I was still fighting back, even after a little while, instead of just being a loser, you know?” Cleansweep immediately started to pipe up, wanting to tell him that he wasn’t a loser, but he continued before she had a chance. “That way, I would have been someone who kept going even when it hurt, like Lex.”
Cleansweep blinked, thrown by the sudden introduction of the camp’s new leader into the conversation. “Lex?”
“Yeah.” Fruit Crunch finally stopped scowling then, a small smile crossing his face. “He’s really something, isn’t he? I knew he was even before he wiped out all those ghouls, ‘cuz when Spit Polish tried to attack him, he really let him have it!” He stood up suddenly, raising onto his hind legs and holding his forelegs over his head, stretching himself as tall as he could. “He turned into a huge shadow, and he was all ‘I’ve slain dragons! What chance did you ever have?!’ And then he completely crushed Spit Polish like a bug! It was incredible!”
“It was pretty cool,” nodded Cleansweep with a smile, hoping he didn’t notice that she was faking it. In fact, seeing Lex like that had frightened her; at the time, she’d been more reassured by the presence of that Sonata lady talking him down. But right now the more important thing was helping her friend feel better.
“It was better than cool,” insisted Fruit Crunch, falling back onto all fours. “It was great! It was his way of saying, ‘I’m too tough for you!’ and then showing just why he was! Did you know he really did slay a dragon? I asked one of those new ponies that came with him about it.” He looked into the distance with a grin, clearly imagining what that must have been like, before his good mood started to fade. “He got hurt pretty badly in that fight, and in some of the other ones he was in too, but he never quit. No matter what happened to him, he always got back up and kept fighting. Not like me…”
“Hey, come on. That’s not fair. He’s him and you’re you.”
“No kidding,” snorted Fruit Crunch derisively. “He’s Lex Legis, the wizard with amazing powers and a magic scythe and who’s tougher than anypony ever, and I’m just Fruit Crunch, the foal who’s good at making fruit juice and whose great-uncle is a McNeigh.” His ears folded back again as he looked at the ground. “I was an idiot for thinking I could even pretend to be as strong as he is.”
Cleansweep opened her mouth, then closed it again. Telling him that he shouldn’t expect to be able to do the things that Lex did – and that she liked him the way he was – clearly wouldn’t get through to him now. But what would? She frowned as she tried to think of something, and silence fell for a short while until a light bulb went off over her head. That’s right! He might not have a magic weapon or be able to cast spells, but there’s one way that he can be like Lex! “What about the Night Mare?”
Fruit Crunch looked at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”
Cleansweep smiled, the gears starting to turn in her head. “Remember a few days ago, when Lex made all of that food appear out of thin air? There was that one pegasus mare who gave a speech right before he did, and she was able to cast a spell even though she wasn’t a unicorn!”
Fruit Crunch paused. “I…yeah. Yeah, I remember her.” He mostly remembered the food that had come afterward. After all, Fruit Crunch hadn’t become a fan of Lex’s until later on, when the red-horned stallion had defeated Spit Polish and then proceeded to take out out all of those ghouls. “She talked about Nightmare Moon, right?”
“No, she was talking about the Night Mare. She said she was a ‘goddess,’ which is like a princess but lives extremely far away, but is so powerful that she can send you some of that power, and that-”
“-that’s where Lex gets some of his magic from!” Fruit Crunch’s eyes widened. “I remember now! She said that the Night Mare is a protector who gives magic to ponies who want to be strong and do what they have to do to protect somepony else!”
“That’s right!” Cleansweep beamed, happy to see her friend perking up. “And that’s one way that you’re just like Lex! So I bet if you ask for help from this Night Mare lady, she’ll totally give you some incredible magic too!”
Fruit Crunch grinned at her, and she was relieved to see that it was his usual grin, the kind he wore just before they got into some mischief. “You really think so?”
Cleansweep nodded firmly. “I’m sure of it! You’ll get your own magic, and just imagine the look on Lex’s face when you show him that you have magic like his!”
Fruit Crunch trotted next to her then, throwing a leg around her neck in a friendly headlock. “You mean when we show him!”
Cleansweep had been laughing as she play-wrestled with him, but stopped when she heard that. “Wait, what?”
“C’mon Dust Bunny, we’ve gotta do this together! We’re best friends!”
Cleansweep bit her lip at that. It was true that they’d done almost everything together for their entire lives, but the idea of working with a pony who did sound an awful lot like Nightmare Moon in order to get strange magic sounded dangerous to her, even if it was done in order to protect other ponies. “I don’t know, Crunchy…”
“C’mon, at least try it out with me! Otherwise I’ll noogie you!” He was quick to make good on his threat, bringing his free hoof around to press against her head and rub it quickly, making her squeal.
“Okay! Okay! I’ll try it!” she laughed, rubbing her head when he let her go a moment later. How bad could it be? Besides, this was her way of protecting somepony. Namely, her best friend, who looked a million times better now than when she’d caught up to him a few minutes ago. But even so, it might be a good idea to hedge her bets. “On one condition?”
“Aww, that’s not fair!”
“Just one condition,” she insisted. “We let the others join too.”
“The oth-, are you kidding me?!” An incredulous look spread across his face. “You wanna let Fiddleface and her two helpers get in on this too?”
“It’ll be more fun if we all do it together! Think about it, we can be like the Power Ponies! A squad of superheroes instead of just one or two of us alone.” More importantly, this would help Fruit Crunch fix things with the others, and let her hang out with everypony instead of having to flit back and forth between him and her other friends.
But he didn’t look completely convinced. “I don’t know. Do you think…do you think they’d want to hang out with me after…” He waved a hoof back in the direction they’d come from. “…everything?”
Cleansweep smiled, glad that he was worried about that. “I bet they will if you explain things to them, just like you did for me.” He fidgeted in place, clearly conflicted, and she nudged him, thinking of everything she knew about superheroes. “Trust me, they’ll forgive you. And after they do, we can get to work on preparing our new super team! We’ll keep it a secret from everypony, and practice getting magic powers when no one’s around, and come up with a name for our group and everything!”
“Alright,” he huffed, starting to walk back toward the others. “But I’ve already picked out a name for us.”
Cleansweep perked her ears, falling in beside him. “Oh yeah?”
“Mm-hmm,” nodded Fruit Crunch. “From now on, we’re gonna be the Night Mare's Knights.”
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food on his threat -- good on his threat
Considering the havoc and general mischief the Crusaders have wrought in the pursuit of their cutie marks, I'm sort of worried what the Knights will do in their own pursuit of the Night Mare's power. Even more so if the goddess actually grants them that power for some reason...wonder if Lex had recovered the stones Fencer lost in the fight with the ghouls yet.
On the bright side, the Night Mare have some potential followers now, even if they're just children but the mind of a child is a lot more malleable so who knows. The only thing missing is someone to actually teach them Night Mare's ways and Lex ain't it as shown when Night Mare chose to impart her knowledge to Cloudbank over Lex...and I just imagined the children inside a classroom with Severance teaching them the ins and outs of the Night Mare's religion.
I can almost already hear the speech the night mare will give these children when they contact her.
"NIght Mare, Night Mare, Night mare!"
"...Hello children"
*Children running away in fear*
"... sigh... every time..."
TREE SAP vs ... I dunno... CULTISTS!!!
ROUND 1 Fight
At this rate, Lex will have to call up a Bishop.
The Golem.
9195941 D'oh! Fixed now.
9196345 There are a lot of different golems, did you have a particular one in mind?
9196236 Tsk, let the children have time to gain some goddess-given powers first!
9196187 Heh, that is a rather amusing scene to imagine, especially given how everypony reacted to Princess Luna in season two's Luna Eclipsed. Hopefully, anypony who wants a working relationship with the Night Mare will be made out of sterner stuff.
Certainly, that's what she'd demand.
9196097 Lex did indeed retrieve the ioun stones later on. Don't forget, when the train arrived in chapter 263, Lex was using them just in case the ponies on it turned out to be hostile. When he realized they weren't, he put them away.
As for what sort of trouble the Knights could get into...well, there's significant potential there. Especially since this chapter made it clear that Cleansweep and Fruit Crunch were troublemakers, what with the various pranks and hijinks that he helped her out on before now. Hopefully, the other foals will be a mitigating influence, since Straightlace seems like the upstanding type, Feathercap comes across as timid, and Fiddlesticks is a responsible young filly. Altogether, the five of them seem perfect for some wacky adventures...oh, and don't forget Tiddlywinks!
With regard to how well they'll learn the Night Mare's doctrine, issues of having a source on hoof might be a problem. Even Cloudbank hadn't learned very much of it before she was killed, having given only a single sermon. But Severance is still there, and we know that there are other forms of non-doctrinal divine spellcasting, such as what oracles do (and Princess Luminace's Guide to the Pony Pantheon explicitly states that singular deities might be the force behind an oracle, rather than them having to channel the powers of multiple gods with converging interests). Of course, that usually results in the person using that power developing some sort of personal disability as a result of the magical channels in their body being warped so as to channel divine power without having to adjust to it beforehand, but maybe the children won't go that route...?
We'll just have to see.
i like the chapter.
and i love the name
9196491 Thanks! It was one of those names that just came to me as I was putting everything together, and I knew it was perfect (though, to be fair, I'm sure I've heard similar sobriquets before; the night/knight homophone isn't exactly rare).
Lex is a hippocrite. He calls out the princesses on ruling while he gave access to a goddess all about the powerful dominating the weak.
He is doing more damage to equestria than good.
END this and move back to everglow. It is way better and would not have the tyrant that does not want to admit that all he wants is power lex.
9196684
9196685 The Night Mare's credo of "the strong do as they will, the weak suffer what they must" (to paraphrase her doctrine) is very Nietzschean in its amorality, but it's not necessarily hypocritical when compared to the rule of the alicorn princesses. The reason for that is because the exercise of power, in terms of its use of control over others, need not necessarily be evil with regards to the ends it pursues nor the means with which it pursues them. Lex is aware of this, and is of the opinion that the princesses - who have near-totally disengaged from the actual process of governance - are less benevolent than a moral leader who is actively engaged with politics. Though he might be harsher than what the ponies are used to, he's extremely interested in the public's welfare.
To that end, of course, power is necessary. It's important to remember that the alicorn princesses are also "tyrants" in that they maintain absolute authority with no other institution or body to check their activities, save for what they decide to allow (such as the E.E.A., which Princess Celestia initially describes as a group whose backing even a princess needs in order to teach, only to end up supporting Twilight when she openly defies them). The difference is that they've elected not to use most of their power, something Lex cannot forgive them for, as he's seen how Equestria hasn't changed in any appreciable sense over a millennium. Given that, a goddess who champions individual achievement and the exercising of authority is a natural fit for him; "dominating the weak" doesn't necessarily have to mean doing wrong by them.
As for returning to Everglow...well, that might be in the cards for the future. You'll just have to keep reading along and see.
This is awesome. I suspected Fruit Crunch would be headed towards the Night Mare, but I thought it would have to wait until her priestess is resurrected (when is that happening)?
My guess is that Fruit Crunch will get her power, but not the other foals. All the other foals sound like they're good-aligned, basically, like most ponies. Fruit Crunch has been a bully most of his life, and now he wants to be stronger than any other bully could ever be. He might genuinely want to protect his closest friend, but he's definitely neutral, and could probably be groomed to be a LE by the Night Mare.
So my guess is that all the foals will want to be Night Mare Knights, but only Fruit Crunch will have the proper mindset to channel her power. I'm very interested in seeing how they develop. Perhaps Fruit Crunch will be an Inquisitor someday?
9196461
What I was saying there is you dont need to have the apostrophe to make ponies' into a plural and possessive. "Ponies" is sufficient.
9196466
Aww I had A fight sequence planned without magic
9197742
9196236
Tree saps used Crusade
Its not That effective
Cultists Turn
<Inventory>
<Dictionary>
The cultists Pull Out a Dictionary
"Crusades ... Crusade There We are,
A series of medieval military expeditions made by Ponies to recover the Cup of Celestia from the Griffons
Crusading is Done with heavy Armour and weaopons, To kill the other Religion"
Cultists: "Hey , Why dont we do that"
Tree Sap Has forgotten how to Crusade
Cultists Have Learned Crusade
Tree Sap has no more moves left
Tree sap Uses panic.
It is completely and totally useless
Cultists use crusade
...
...
...
Tree saps have fainted
Flawless Victory
9196980 Lex's use of that resurrection spell the Night Mare gave him in the form of a gemstone is something that he knows he needs to get to, it's just that there are other things that are more pressing. That, and I suspect he's having a hard time digesting the idea that it will only bring back one pony when so many have died. Hence his desire to try and unravel the spell so that he can learn it himself and bring back more than one pony. Of course, I suspect that he'll have a hard time there.
As for Fruit Crunch, is he a bully? Or are we seeing him at a particularly low point in his life? We've already seen how Vanhoover's collapse and the subsequent fallout has changed many ponies for the worse (e.g. Garden Gate, Spit Polish, etc.), so maybe that's what's happening here? True, he apparently got into a lot of mischief with Cleansweep, and seemed to at least abet (if not encourage) her acting up, but was any of what she listed truly mean-spirited? In other words, would serving the Night Mare really make him worse? As of right now, it seems to be something that's bringing him back together with the other foals.
As for whether or not they'll be able to gain divinely-granted powers due to issues of alignment...well...there are other ways to serve the gods.
9197033 Can you cite something for this? I'm not sure that the idea of showing a plural possessive for a group without an apostrophe, at least in this instance, is correct.
9197760 You've lost me again. I think this is something about Pokemon?
9198702 I understand Lex's motivation to try and study the spell (I doubt he'll succeed, but I can understand why he wants to try). I just want to see more Cloudbank, since I think her position as a cleric of the Night Mare both helps and complicates Lex's position in interesting ways.
The way the other foals were talking/acting around Fruit Crunch makes him sound rather like a bully, and it doesn't sound like they were basing their views of his actions just on what had happened during the disaster, but before it as well. I could be reading it wrong, but it sounds like he seems to think the other foals besides his closest friend are "weak/losers," etc. It looks like Fruit Crunch thought being strong/cool was the most important thing, even before the disaster. Of course, that's something he could have readily grown out of, but after this disaster is a lot less likely to. But if there's a single idea that makes you want to follow the Night Mare, it's probably the idea that strength is incredibly important.
Yeah, Fruit Crunch might not get any magic, he doesn't exactly come off as having a ton of mental stats. Once Cloudy gets rezzed perhaps she will need an altar-boy?
9198720
No, you misunderstand. I'm saying it doesn't need to be possessive, and simply being a plural will do.
9198721
So what games have you played, So i can make BAD references?
9198876 The other foals quite clearly thought of Fruit Crunch as being a bully, but you'll notice that there was no indication given as to how long they've known him. Cleansweep was very forthright about having known him her entire life, but that wasn't said with regard to any of the other children. My suspicion is that Fruit Crunch got beaten fairly early on, and it twisted him on the inside, and that's the foal that the others got to know, with only Cleansweep knowing that wasn't who he was. Though I suppose that brings up the issue of why she didn't talk to him earlier, but given that their survival was in doubt up until now, that's somewhat understandable.
As for what magic or other powers he might get, well...it's a little premature to speculate. Who knows if they'll even be successful in appealing to the goddess?
9198941 That...doesn't sound right to me. It's attributing that to them by saying "worth," so I think it does need to be possessive in nature.
9199884 Eh, the truth is that I've been playing fewer and fewer video games as time goes by. If you go for some of the classics from previous generations I'm more likely to know them, and I still try to keep tabs on the news regarding what's going on, but nowadays I'm much more likely to turn to books rather than dig deeply into video games (though I do still play some big Nintendo titles).
You this up messed sentence. Or maybe you accidentally a word.
So now Lex has a Scout group.
9223651 Gah, that was awkward. "Eyes" should have been "way." It's fixed now.
As for the Knights, they're a secret group for now. Maybe they'll surprise Lex at a suitably dramatic moment later?